Lisa Hamilton's Real Rural project uses photographs and interviews to document the lives of people living on California's farms and in its small towns. [more inside]
posted by .kobayashi. on Feb 4, 2013 - 32 comments

Since 2009, a thread on the Skyscraper Page forums has been dedicated to trawling for old photos and stories of Los Angeles, mostly from the LA Public Library and USC Archives. Thousands of posts have accumulated into a fascinating portrait of the city. [more inside]
posted by anazgnos on Jul 4, 2012 - 8 comments

Moscow of 1931 is a collection of hand-tinted lantern slides by Branson DeCou, an American photographer and travelogue lecturer who traveled the world for 30 years before his death in 1941. You can view more of the DeCou corpus online at the Branson Decou Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz where they've been attempting to sort, preserve, identify and digitize 10,000 DeCou slides received in 1971, a gift referred to the university chancellor by photographer Ansel Adams. [more inside]
posted by taz on Apr 14, 2012 - 16 comments

Last month, California decided to shutter 70 of its 278 state parks. "70in70 is an attempt to create memories before history outpaces us: 70 state parks are slated for closure this year, and we intend to visit each one within the next 70 days."
posted by SpringAquifer on Jun 26, 2011 - 89 comments

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) was an early western photographer, notable for his views of San Francisco and Yosemite. Watkins made his images with a custom built "Mammoth" 18x22" glass plate camera. [more inside]
posted by starman on May 29, 2011 - 7 comments

Photographer Matt Logue's empty L. A. shows the effect of the city being completely people-less.
posted by gman on Nov 20, 2009 - 42 comments

Maynard L. Parker was an architectural photographer whose work appeared for much of the 20th century in House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Sunset Magazine and many covers for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, which was then called Home. He photographed many well-known architectural homes, including the work of Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright. Over 58,000 of those photographs are now available through the Huntington Library. Here are some examples.
posted by vronsky on Sep 13, 2009 - 3 comments

Time-lapse video of the Southern California wildfires. Another image of the fires, as seen from space. Google Map.
posted by mattdidthat on Sep 3, 2009 - 20 comments

NPR article and slide show of the works of Julius Shulman. If you've seen anything by Shulman, you've seen this one. Gas station buffs probably favor this. And, if this one wasn't in Playboy, it should have been! And, bunches more though a google image search. And, at 98, he's still capturing images!
posted by HuronBob on Mar 26, 2009 - 5 comments

Photographer Pirkle Jones, best known for his images of California's migrant workers and changing landscape (including a collaboration with Dorothea Lange) and his iconic Black Panther pictures, has died at 95.
posted by scody on Mar 24, 2009 - 8 comments

Los Angeles-based photographer Andrew Bush mounts a camera on the side of his car to capture freeway drivers in the southwestern United States. [more inside]
posted by dhammond on Jun 24, 2008 - 33 comments

Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990
posted by miss lynnster on Jan 13, 2008 - 15 comments

Pictures of California Wildfires. Some fire resources: Fire maps, Official Information and an up to the moment news blog. In related news, Twitter proves to be useful, while anger rages as evidence of arson mounts. More Photos here and here.
posted by psmealey on Oct 28, 2007 - 19 comments

"Everything is foggy. Everything is not clear. He was alive when we got to the other side. And now I have brought him back dead. Whatever hopes we had, that's where they ended."
The Summer of the Death of Hilario Guzman (BugMeNot)
posted by matteo on Sep 3, 2006 - 13 comments

From organically-farming Zen centers to celebrity-cultivating Scientology centres^TM, California is a seedbed of the most earnest (and most frivolous or worse) branches of spiritual inquiry. What's in the water in the Golden State that has made it The Visionary State? In an interview with editor Geoff Manaugh of the excellent BLDGBLOG, author Erik Davis -- whose published passions have ranged from an analysis of Philip K. Dick's "divine invasions" to erudite musings on Led Zeppelin's fourth album to an ode to the joys of being a teenage bongeur -- talks about the formerly chic devil-worshipper Anton LaVey, Beat Zen, Aldous Huxley, the Watts Towers, and beyond, with great photos by Michael Rauner, who collaborated with Davis on the new book.
posted by digaman on Aug 10, 2006 - 30 comments

Huntington Beach, California (Surf City, USA) is home to surfing's walk of fame and the International Surfing Museum. See the Duke with the Duke, other legends, pioneering photographers, and kings of the surf both local and international alongside other icons in the collection and exhibits.
posted by breezeway on Apr 29, 2005 - 12 comments

Not quite moblogging. Though basically a publicity ploy by the cowbox folks, Candidate Camera is still worth a browse. A digital camera has been offered to every single one of the candidates in the California recall election — from Adam to Zellhoefer — and they're sending in shots from the campaign trail. Clearly some are having fun with the project, from the unknown to the infamous. And while others are going for the mom and apple pie constituency, at least a couple are aiming at the Maxim mindset. Having David Hume Kennerly at the helm adds some credibility, and while his featured photo picks are always good, you can always — in true blogger style — just jump to the latest entries.
posted by pzarquon on Sep 22, 2003 - 6 comments

Avocado Memories. It's more than a photo collection and group of essays about his parents' failures with interior decoration; it's a nostalgic website brought about by Wes Clark's impulse to let his children know what it was like growing up during a more innocent age.
posted by debralee on Jun 17, 2003 - 9 comments

pointless but surprisingly beautiful photos taken using a kite on the northern California coast
posted by marvin on Nov 8, 2002 - 21 comments